Wanna See Some Pictures?
by The Wizard Rider
Summary: All Severus Snape wants to do is to achieve his well-earned rest in the afterlife. Too bad a guy called Maes Hughes shows up and asks him if he'd like to see some pictures of his friends and family. Doesn't seem like any harm, right? Two-shot.
1. Chapter 1

_**Wanna See Some Pictures?**_

 _ **Summary :**_ _ **All Severus Snape wants to do is to achieve his well-earned rest in the afterlife. Too bad a guy called Maes Hughes shows up and asks him if he'd like to see some pictures of his friends and family. Doesn't seem like any harm, right? Two-shot.**_

* * *

All Severus Snape wanted to do was to achieve his well-earned rest in the afterlife.

Well, yes, he _had_ been bitten by the Dark Lord's snake, and yes, he _had_ looked at Potter's eyes, just before he had died and left the Wizarding world, reminding himself once again of his childhood crush, Lily Evans.

Yes... maybe that was what he wanted to do first. Look for Lily, make sure to avoid James Potter (that arrogant toerag, as Lily had once called him), and hopefully, none of the other wizards that had perished in the Battle of Hogwarts as members of the Order, or on Potter's side. That would make for some _terrible_ communication, hopefully.

He looked around. The afterlife was like a city in the sky, was crowded with people. _So. Many. People._ He had managed to avoid Sirius Black (thank goodness), but it wasn't just people in cloaks and robes and Wizarding attire - there were people with bows and arrows, strange helmets and tunics, even people who looked like modern Muggles! It didn't annoy Snape much, though. He moved on, looking around. Then he saw a figure in blue Muggle army clothing. _Maybe he's a guard of the afterlife,_ Snape thought.

But as he moved closer, he reached out for his wand (did his wand even freaking _work_ in the afterlife?) for this man looked and resembled a lot like James Potter. But as Snape saw his face, it wasn't him. The army man's glasses were rectangular, not round like Potter's, and his hair was spiky. And since when did James Potter have a short, scruffy beard?

"Hey!" the man exclaimed. "What ya gonna do, say some silly word and some light comes out?"

Snape lowered his wand a little. _Muggles... they don't know that it could happen._ But Snape, unlike the other Death Eaters would, felt no need or desire to push this Muggle away with magic - Cruciatus, perhaps, an incantation of 'Sectumsempra' for a little fun, borrowed from Snape himself. He always felt a little pity for Muggles - in the absence of other wizards - so he stowed his wand away.

"You seem like you knew me. In fact, you didn't right?" laughed the man.

Snape shook his head. "Yes, I'm sorry, I'm going to leave now."

But as he turned...

"Whoa, slow down there! We just met each other! Let's be friends! I'm Maes Hughes, good to meet you!" The man held out his hand.

Snape didn't want to shake the man's hand, or talk to him, or be his friend, really, but out of politeness, said quietly, "Severus Snape," and took his hand for shaking.

But as soon as their hands clasped for shaking, the man Hughes shook it _as fast as hell._ It was so freaking fast, Snape's arm wasn't nothing but a blob of black and skin.

When they broke apart, Snape couldn't feel his hand anymore.

"All right," Snape said. "I'll be going now."

He turned to leave once again, then:

"Hey!" came Hughes' voice. "We just met! We just became friends! I always do this with friends, to commemorate our friendship! Look-y here!" Hughes reached into the pocket of his army coat.

Snape said, "Oh, no, thanks-"

"No, I _insist!_ Man, oh, man, you're gonna _love this..."_

 _At this rate, we'll be having a friendship dance soon,_ Snape thought. _I could've been reunited with Lily now, from Merlin's sake!_

"And... here! Ta-da! Look!" Hughes got out a pile of something that looked a lot like photos. "So... wanna see some pictures?"

Snape mentally face-palmed in his head. But... it was just one or two pictures, what could go wrong?


	2. Chapter 2

_**Chapter 2**_

"... And this is my daughter, Elysia, on her fiffy-seventh day at preschool! Look at the pictures she's drawing! Aren't they masterpieces? Even the great Leonardo da Vinci would come and worship her works!"

 _Will this torture ever end?_ spoke a desperate, pleading voice in Severus Snape's mind. For Merlin's sake, he had only hoped for one or two pictures, then he'd be on his way. Who knew... _who knew_ that (and if) Maes Hughes kept _thousands_ of photos under that army jacket of his?

(Alright, Snape probably couldve been exaggerating about _thousands_ of pictures. He'd come to realise that Hughes was a Muggle, and that he couldn't have done any magic to keep that many photos under his coat, plus the pockets on his clothes. Thousands? The former Potions master narrowed it down to _hundreds.)_

"... don't forget my wife, Gracia, too!" Hughes grinned like a massive idiot (which Snape assumed he was). "She's _so_ beautiful..." then Hughes stopped to a halt. He handed the piles of photos to Snape, and started panicking. "Oh no! Now that I'm dead, _every guy in Central must be asking her out!_ But NO! She's too pretty, but she can't just cheat on me, even if I'm _dead..._ I need to go back to Amestris as a ghost and see if she's cheating on me... but she's _too LOYAL! SHE'S A FAITHFUL WIFE!_ She'll never cheat on me!"

While the panicking was happening, Snape quietly set down the pile of photos, thinking, _I wish I'd never met this man,_ and began to silently sneak away into the crowd of the newly deceased, but Hughes grabbed him by the sleeve of his arm, and said, "Wait! Not yet! I wanna show you some pictures of my buddy Roy!"

 _Buddy? Don't you mean victim?_ Snape thought in exasperation, as Hughes got out the next pile of photos. One showed Hughes and another man laughing and drinking at a bar. This man had dark, messy hair, and he had an army jacket like Hughes', except the stars and stripes on the shoulders were much different. "See? See? That's my buddy Roy! I met him at the academy, y'know, when I took a slice of quiche he said was _his..._ I mean, he hadn't _touched_ it, so..."

But what happened next to the amazing story (that Snape rolled his eyes at), the Potions master never knew, as he quietly snuck away, back into the crowd.

So... what was his goal? To find Lily Potter and say sorry, for all the things he had said and done to her...

"Hey!" A voice called from behind. "Snape!"

 _No, I'm not going back to look at your photos,_ Snape thought angrily, then he ran away, as fast as he could, not focusing on anything, not headed for anything...

"Aah!"

Snape heard a ladylike shriek. He looked up, and found that he had fallen on top of someone. She had red hair, and green eyes. The eyes of Harry Potter...

"L... Lily?"

The woman blinked twice, then said suspiciously, "Snape?"

"Oi, Snape!" Snape heard Hughes' voice. "I took a photo of that! Wanna see?"

 _Wait here, Lily,_ Snape thought angrily. _Wait until I strangle this idiot..._


End file.
